Paul by Daisy Lafarge

Author:Daisy Lafarge [Lafarge, Daisy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

WHEN I RETURNED THAT EVENING it was not yet six, but the woman I presumed was Mireille was already standing outside the shop waiting. She smiled on seeing me approach and held up a pair of hiking shoes. Her long plait had disappeared and instead her hair was braided to her head like a laurel wreath.

“Here.” She pressed the shoes into my hands. I sat on the step and wrestled my hot feet into them. They seemed to fit fine. “You can leave those here and pick them up later,” she said, pointing to the sandals in my hands. I thanked her and she locked them in the studio. My attention snagged for a moment; no one had locked anything in Lazeaux.

We introduced ourselves properly. She was indeed Mireille, and she smiled when I told her my name.

“Like the saint!”

“Different spelling.”

We walked up the main street, past the empty square and half-built chapiteau. We took a road uphill to the mairie that looked like a dead end. Mireille pressed on. The road curved behind the building and thinned to a dirt track. We were soon surrounded by trees on either side, trekking through a forest I hadn’t known was close by. The land fell away on either side of us, and every now and then the white valley glimmered through the trees. The air was mild and fragrant. Mireille was right; evenings were better for walking. We kept a steady pace. The only sounds were our footsteps rustling the undergrowth and the rhythmic slosh of Mireille’s water bottle.

“So are you all right at Valerie and Artur’s by yourself?”

“Yes, fine.” I blinked.

She gave me a sidelong look.

“I think I’d be a bit pissed off,” she said. “That they’d left me alone up here.”

Her directness caught me off guard.

“Well, I did wonder why they didn’t tell me sooner,” I said carefully, as if Valerie and Artur could somehow hear me. “But they have their own lives to live, and I’m the one who’s imposing on them.”

She raised her eyebrows. I noticed a crucifix dangling from her neck. “Are you always this docile?” she asked.

It sounded like an accusation. I felt heat rising to my face. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing, really. I’m just overcautious, I suppose, about young women traveling alone. I started late, myself. When I was too old to attract any danger. Now I mostly travel with my girlfriend, Anaïs. You’ll notice her shoes are well worn.”

I waited for her to continue, but she seemed to have finished on the topic. We walked on. The sun was lowering behind us, lighting the larch a dim orange. The white stones beneath our feet turned lilac.

“It’s nice to have someone to walk with,” she said after a while. “Anaïs doesn’t like this path, and no one from the village comes here.”

“Why not?”

“Not interested. Some of them graze their goats a bit on the next mountain, but other than that . . .”

She made a popping sound through her lips. It was akin to a shrug.

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